Grindr In London Overloaded By Gay Olympic Athletes?

If you were one of London's estimated 350,000 Grindr users trying to log into the GPS-based gay dating App last week, you may have encountered some difficulty, due, according to some, to the influx of Olympic athletes trying to use the service.

In a July 19th post on the Grindr blog, App founder Joel Simkhai issued an apology to users who had experienced "service disruptions," and explains, "when we discovered that [Grindr wasn't working], we immediately set to work fixing the screw-up. The service disruption was a challenging thing to address, but our tech team worked around the clock to solve the problems and to whip Grindr back into shape."

Simkhai doesn't address the cause of the disruptions, but London tabloid "The People," attributes it to the influx of Olympic Athletes in London. The publication reports:

A gay dating website crashed within minutes of the first Olympic athletes arriving in London -- due to the volume of demand, say experts... Technicians believe the arrival of Olympic teams on Monday sparked a flood of new customers -- and loss of the service in East London.

One Londoner told The People, “It happened almost as soon as the teams got here. Either loads of athletes were logging on to meet fellow Olympians or were looking to bag a local."

It's unclear whether these quoted Londoners are the "experts" and "technicians," or just average users effected by the disruption. It's also possible that this whole debacle could be an elaborate PR stunt by Grindr, who plugged a "new Grindr later this summer" in the apologetic blog post.

HuffPost Gay Voices reached out to Grindr to comment on the causes of the service disruptions but had not received a reply as of publication of this story.

Veritable or not, the incident raises the important question of homosexuality at the Olympic games. The 2012 games could be a watershed moment for international LGBT rights, with some suggesting that gay and lesbian athletes from countries in which homosexuality is illegal should come out during the games, and seek asylum in Britain. Only time will reveal whether this movement takes hold, but the possibility of there being enough gay athletes to crash Grindr could be a good sign.

Update at 5:13pm ET on July 23: A rep from Grindr tells us:

“While we'd love to believe that the best-built men in the world all dressed up in Lycra and congregating in one place can generate a huge increase in Grindr traffic, we can say with confidence that the arrival of the Olympic teams had little or no effect on our server. The truth is that there are many factors that cause a technological service disruption. We’ve been back in service for a number of days now, as referenced in Joel's blog post."

Below, see a slideshow of openly gay athletes:

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The 27-year-old U.S. Olympic soccer player spoke frankly about her sexuality in an interview with Out magazine, saying she is a lesbian and in a committed relationship with a woman.
While her statement may seem bold, the 27-year-old Rapinoe told Out's Jerry Portwood that she'd just never been asked directly. "I think they were trying to be respectful and that it's my job to say, 'I'm gay,' she said. "Which I am. For the record: I am gay."
Rapinoe, who's been dating her girlfriend -- identified in the magazine only as an Australian soccer player -- for three years, also took time to chat about homophobia in sports and, more specifically, female athletes' perspective on the subject.
"I feel like sports in general are still homophobic, in the sense that not a lot of people are out," she said. Still, she added, "In female sports, if you're gay, most likely your team knows it pretty quickly. It's very open and widely supported. For males, it's not that way at all. It's sad."

In 2007, Amaechi -- who played at Penn State and spent five seasons in the NBA with Orlando -- identified himself as a gay man in his book "Man in the Middle."
Four years later, Amaechi criticized Kobe Bryant after the five-time NBA champion used a gay slur during a game.
"There's only one contemporary meaning for that," he said. "We have to take it as unacceptable as a white person screaming the N-word at a black person. I can tell you that I've been called a f--got fairly routinely, and yet people seem to hold off on calling me the N-word. We've got to mirror that progress."

Thomas's decision to confirm his sexuality while still an active rugby player was praised by LGBT rights advocates as a brave move. Though others have since followed suit, Thomas hoped people who eventually consider his sexuality as irrelevant. "What I choose to do when I close the door at home has nothing to do with what I have achieved in rugby," he told The Guardian. "I'd love for it, in 10 years' time, not to even be an issue in sport, and for people to say: 'So what?'"

The Prague-born tennis pro, who came out as bisexual in 1981, is credited with having "expanded the dialogue on issues of gender and sexuality in sports," according to ESPN. "Martina was the first legitimate superstar who literally came out while she was a superstar," Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, said. "She exploded the barrier by putting it on the table. She basically said this part of my life doesn't have anything to do with me as a tennis player. Judge me for who I am."

The Olympic diver, who took home the gold medal in 2008 in the ten meter platform, revealed his sexuality in an exclusive interview with The Sydney Morning Herald. Mitcham, then 20 years old, credited partner Lachlan with helping him battle depression and emotional burnout in the years before his Olympic triumph.

Known as much for his colorful fashion sense as his slick moves on the ice, Weir faced intense media scrutiny over his sexual orientation before finally coming out in his recently published memoirs. "With people killing themselves and being scared into the closet, I hope that even just one person can gain strength from my story," Weir said at the time. "A lot of the gays got downright angry about my silence. But pressure is the last thing that would make me want to 'join' a community."

Unfortunately, the tennis pro's 1981 outing was not her choice; she was forced out when her former female lover sued her for palimony and nearly lost all of her commercial endorsements as a result. But her career was far from over, and in 2000, she became the first open lesbian ever to coach an Olympic team.

The Australian hockey champ, who retired this year, came out earlier this week in an emotional YouTube video, The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting. "I regret immensely that I wasn't strong enough as a leader, that I didn't step up when I was playing and share this about myself,'' he is quoted as saying in the video.

Originally from Quebec, the Canadian hockey champ decided to stop hiding her sexual orientation while still a freshman at Harvard University. "If they weren't going to accept me on the team," she told The Seattle Times, "I wasn't going to stay."

In 1995, the Olympic diving hero (who became the first man in 56 years to win two gold medals in diving when he captured the platform and the springboard events in Los Angeles 11 years earlier) shocked fans when he decided to come out as both gay and HIV-positive on The Oprah Winfrey Show. "People who were close to me -- family and friends -- they knew about my sexuality," he said in 2006. "I just did not discuss my personal life, my sexuality with the media. That was my policy."

Formerly of the San Diego Padres, baseball player Billy Bean came out in 1999, five years after he retired. Now, however, he says he has regrets about ending his baseball career after just six seasons. "If I had only told my parents, I probably would have played two or three more years and understood that I could come out a step at a time, not have to do it in front of a microphone," he is quoted by Outsports as saying. "And I was completely misguided. I had no mentor. I think that's where the responsibility comes in for people who have lived that experience, and we take for granted that everybody's adjusted and gets it."

The pro-golfer, who won 13 events during her 21 years, came out in a 2004 New York Times editorial. "You see, my sponsor, Olivia, is one of the world's largest and most respected companies catering to lesbian travelers, and this represents the first time a company like this has sponsored a professional athlete -- a gay professional athlete," Jones wrote. "Inherent in this sponsorship is my coming out. It's a bit of a curiosity, because I've never been in the closet. For more than 25 years, I've been very comfortable with the fact that I'm gay...I have never, until now, felt the need to discuss it in the news media."

The champion rider, who competed in six consecutive Olympics, says he's never had much of a problem with being open about his sexual orientation in the equestrian world. Still, as he he told Outsports, "I did not connect my social life to my work life for many years, and while I never ran away from the issue of my homosexuality, I must admit that I had no real interest in bringing attention to it, especially with the press...what changed everything was a combination of meeting my soul-mate Robert Ross, whom I was so proud to be with that I wanted everyone to know, and the AIDS epidemic which affected so many people dear to me."

The South African-born commissioner of World Team Tennis has also been the partner of Billie Jean King for more than 20 years. She also credits King with encouraging her to pursue her career. "I had an opportunity to hit tennis balls with Billie Jean King when she was in South Africa when I was 11," she said. "She encouraged me to pursue my dream, and I did."